Halifax’s Tara Thorne excited ahead of her film’s sold-out premiere at AIFF

Having kicked off on Wednesday, the 2024 edition of the Atlantic International Film Festival (AIFF) is now underway.

One of the highly-anticipated movies making its debut is Lakeview, a vibrant heartfelt queer ensemble comedy that follows a group of friends celebrating a divorce with a girls weekend at a summer cottage.

Directed by Halifax-based journalist-turned-filmmaker Tara Thorne, the movie’s world premiere at AIFF marks the director’s return after showcasing her debut feature Compulsus at the festival back in 2022.

She says the 44-year-old festival that will screen more than a hundred films over eight days has always been fantastic for local filmmakers but it has only improved since Martha Cooley and Lisa Haller took charge as executive director and director of programming, respectively.

“I think it is just more forward looking, it’s not just what everybody else is showing,” explains Thorne. “It doesn’t matter to a person in Halifax what the Calgary Film Festival is showing. It’s what works for this audience, I think they really consider that.”

For Thorne, AIFF isn’t just a good chance to get your movie seen by local audiences either; it’s also a chance to meet with distributors and work to get the film out into the rest of the world.

“There’s a lot of distributors in town so if they’re not able to come out to the screening, I’m at least trying to meet with them and get some face time and hopefully exit the festival with a distribution partner in place,” she adds.

Described as a “refreshingly authentic portrayal of modern relationships, infused with warmth and hilarity,” Lakeview shouldn’t be too challenged in grabbing the attention of distributors just as her first movie Compulsus did in AIFF two years ago.

That film is now scheduled to receive a theatrical release in select theatres across Canada in October.